Cargo Cult - Who is John Frum? He is known to us by many names, this Visitor from Elsewhere, dispenser of endless abundance and wielder of mysterious technologies: John Frum, Quetzalcoatl, Osiris, "Bob." His cargo is splendid, his generosity boundless, his motives beyond our understanding. But across the ages and around the world, the stories all agree: one day he will return, bearing great gifts. Our theme this year asks three related questions; who is John Frum, where is he really from, and where, on spaceship Earth, are we all going?

In Mali, West Africa, lives a tribe of people called the Dogon. The Dogon are believed to be of Egyptian decent and their astronomical lore goes back thousands of years to 3200 BC. According to their traditions, the star Sirius has a companion star which is invisible to the human eye. This companion star has a 50 year elliptical orbit around the visible Sirius and is extremely heavy. It also rotates on its axis.

The Dog Days originally were the days when Sirius rose just before or at the same time as sunrise (heliacal rising), which is no longer true, owing to precession of the equinoxes. The Romans sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that the star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather.

Ugly Dougly wrote:In Mali, West Africa, lives a tribe of people called the Dogon. The Dogon are believed to be of Egyptian decent and their astronomical lore goes back thousands of years to 3200 BC. According to their traditions, the star Sirius has a companion star which is invisible to the human eye. This companion star has a 50 year elliptical orbit around the visible Sirius and is extremely heavy. It also rotates on its axis.

they also have a cave with a drawing of the solar system very old and accurate.

From what I can gather, they didn't pick up writing until sometime between the 13th and 15th centuries AD.

Ancient Sumerian culture has its roots going back as far as 7000 BCE, but it's all pretty muddy until the 5th millenia BCE. Then they picked up the first written version of a spoken language, civilization (building cities), brewing of beer, system of accounting (probably to keep track of the beer), agriculture and farming, the building of temples/ziggurats all in a relatively short period of time. They recorded that they were given these gifts not by gods, but by beings they called the Anunnaki who came down from the heavens and lived among them. By all accounts they appear to have taken a powder sometime towards the end of the Uruk period (3100-2900BCE), from then on they're only spoken of as legend (in stuff like the Epic Of Gilgamesh) or in past tense.

trilobyte wrote:From what I can gather, they didn't pick up writing until sometime between the 13th and 15th centuries AD.

Ancient Sumerian culture has its roots going back as far as 7000 BCE, but it's all pretty muddy until the 5th millenia BCE. Then they picked up the first written version of a spoken language, civilization (building cities), brewing of beer, system of accounting (probably to keep track of the beer), agriculture and farming, the building of temples/ziggurats all in a relatively short period of time. They recorded that they were given these gifts not by gods, but by beings they called the Anunnaki who came down from the heavens and lived among them. By all accounts they appear to have taken a powder sometime towards the end of the Uruk period (3100-2900BCE), from then on they're only spoken of as legend (in stuff like the Epic Of Gilgamesh) or in past tense.

trilobyte wrote:From what I can gather, they didn't pick up writing until sometime between the 13th and 15th centuries AD.

Ancient Sumerian culture has its roots going back as far as 7000 BCE, but it's all pretty muddy until the 5th millenia BCE. Then they picked up the first written version of a spoken language, civilization (building cities), brewing of beer, system of accounting (probably to keep track of the beer), agriculture and farming, the building of temples/ziggurats all in a relatively short period of time. They recorded that they were given these gifts not by gods, but by beings they called the Anunnaki who came down from the heavens and lived among them. By all accounts they appear to have taken a powder sometime towards the end of the Uruk period (3100-2900BCE), from then on they're only spoken of as legend (in stuff like the Epic Of Gilgamesh) or in past tense.

"They are believed to be of Egyptian descent. After living in Libya for a time, they settled in Mali, West Africa, bringing with them astronomy legends dating from before 3200 BCE.

"As Temple read Graiule's material on the Dogon, he found that their mythology traced their origins back to the Nommo, the human-fish creatures from their creation myths. Temple related these creatures to Oannes of Sumerian mythology who was also a half-fish, half-human creature who brought civilization to an ancient people. Further, Temple found links with Egyptian and Greek mythology. He wrote a book about his interpretation of the Dogon beliefs, called The Sirius Mystery, which was published in the 1970s. In the book, Temple contends that the Nommo were extraterrestrials who came to Earth from a planet in the Sirius system. They visited the Dogon, the Babylonians, and possibly the Egyptians, and the astronomical knowledge of the Dogon came from this contact."

trilobyte wrote:Even at 3200BCE (or just before), that's thousands of years after the Sumerians (who predate the Egyptians and Babylonians too).

[edited to add]Don't get me wrong, the Dogon people and their culture and history are both fascinating and remarkable. It's just not the earliest case of what appears to be an interstellar cargo cult.

Yeah, it looks like the fish people had been busy:

"Temple related these creatures to Oannes of Sumerian mythology who was also a half-fish, half-human creature who brought civilization to an ancient people." Now I need to find a Meso-American example.

It's fascinating stuff, if you care to do the research. Fish people (aka reptilian) connections occur in a number of places, and various incarnations of the Anunnaki (Sumerian benefactors) appear to have touched and impacted many different civilizations.